The latter may well be right, but the former aren't totally off base, either: An analysis of NPR's connections on Twitter shows it has the sort of network you'd expect to see from a left-of-center person or institution.

That conclusion comes from researchers at Duke University, who set out to see if they could use the social graph to accurately plot the ideological affiliations of political candidates.
Using the voting networks of politicians to establish a liberal-to-conservative gradient, the researchers then analyzed the candidates' Twitter networks -- ie. who they followed and who followed them -- and found the results described a curve that matched that of the voting records.

Next, the researchers looked at the Twitter networks of a variety of individuals and brands in the media business. The results were pretty much what you'd expect: A curve with right-wing people and outlets like Michelle Malkin and The Weekly Standard at one end, left wingers like Ezra Klein and The Nation at the other end, and BBC News and C-Span near the center point. The only surprises were how far to the left some mainstream entities, such as Katie Couric and the Washington Post, fell (although that would be no surprise at all to those who think the entire mainstream media is shot through with liberal bias).

The New York Times Bits blog wrote about the Duke group's findings yesterday but omitted to mention where NPR fell on the curve. Since NPR and publicly-funded broadcasting have been such hot topics lately, I asked one of the researchers, David B. Sparks, where it resides. His answer: somewhat to the left of center, but further to the right than Couric, the Post, the Los Angeles Times or Brian Williams. (See full chart below.)

Of course, none of them receive federal funding.

A caveat: The Duke team's results don't directly get at the ideologies of the entities themselves, only at the makeup of the networks that surround them. "We would say that our estimates relate to the perception of a given entity," Sparks says. "However, for the purposes of our paper and possibly for thinking about the media, perceptions may be what is actually important."

Sparks says The New York Times couldn't be included in the study "due to a limitation on the way we were able to collect data."